Incoming CMS Superintendent Talks with WCCB Charlotte About Leading District

CHARLOTTE, NC – We’re learning more about the next Superintendent who will lead the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District.

The school board named Dr. Clayton Wilcox to the position Tuesday.

Wilcox spent the past five years as superintendent of Washington County Public Schools in Hagerstown, Maryland.

“I’m really excited to come because I just felt a really strong synergy, a sense of purpose with the board,” Wilcox told WCCB Charlotte over the phone Tuesday night.

Wilcox says he’s ready to get to work and meet the community.

“Such a sense of possibility there. I wanted to be there and help serve the community’s children,” Wilcox says.

School board members say they chose him because of a long-track record in education, previous experience as a superintendent, and his passion for the job.

“He has a real warmth and genuineness to him,” says CMS School Board Vice-Chair Elyse Dashew.

Wilcox has been in his current job in Hagerstown since 2011.

Before that he was a Vice-President for Scholastic books in New York.

Wilcox served as superintendent in Pinellas County, Florida from 2004 to 2008.

He also held various leadership positions in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System from 1999 to 2004.

Dashew told WCCB Charlotte one big factor in the search was finding someone committed to the district long-term.

“We’re looking for stability,” Dashew says.

But reports show Wilcox left earlier jobs years before his contract was up, including now in Hagerstown, where the school board just signed him to a new four year contact in June.

But Wilcox told WCCB Charlotte that being 61-years-old, he plans to settle down in Charlotte.

“I think they were not at all excited about bringing somebody who would be looking for that next best thing. I assured them that I was not. That I would stay as long as they would have me,” Wilcox told WCCB Charlotte.

Wilcox also expressed his support for the district’s new student assignment plan and uniting the community around it.

He says productive, diverse learning environments are needed.

“It”s not just characterized by race. But by economic circumstance and by a number of other factors, makes a great deal of sense. Because that’s the world that we all live in,” Wilcox says.

Wilcox tells WCCB Charlotte he visited Charlotte several times while working with Scholastic.

He’s been offered a four year contract at CMS.

He will make $280,000 a year and start work July 1st.